“That’s what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It’s geometrically progressive—all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.”
― The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
― The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“The thrust here is that Dostoevsky wrote fiction about the stuff that's really important. He wrote fiction about identity, moral value, death, will, sexual vs. spiritual love, greed, freedom, obsession, reason, faith, suicide. And he did it without ever reducing his characters to mouthpieces or his books to tracts. His concern was always what it is to be a human being-that is, how to be an actual person, someone whose life is informed by values and principles, instead of just an especially shrewd kind of self-preserving animal.”
― Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
― Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
“National pride may be an absurd feeling, yet a rooster's pride as he struts about in his own yard amid the hens is biologically useful.
(The Captive Mind)”
― La mente cautiva
(The Captive Mind)”
― La mente cautiva
“The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.”
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Bruce’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Bruce’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Favorite Genres
Art, Biography, Classics, Crime, History, Humor and Comedy, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Philosophy, and Science
Polls voted on by Bruce
Lists liked by Bruce
















































